How Our First Three Years Shape Our Stress Response & Beliefs

Attachment & Its Impact on Our Autonomic Nervous System & Our Thoughts About Ourselves & Others

Though I’ve previously discussed the hormonal stress response, inflammation, the autonomic nervous system, right and left brain hemisphere differences, and even methylation, these can’t be fully understood without putting them into the context of our first three years of life. 

In the earliest part of my career, I specialized in treating children with attachment-related issues, many having been adopted from international orphanages or foster care. They taught me a great deal and continue to influence my work and understanding of relationships.

In this newsletter, I’ll discuss:

• Our forgotten foundation - the importance of what we don’t “remember.”

• The purpose of attachment.

• How attachment impacts the development of our autonomic nervous system.

• How attachment shapes our beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world.

• The trauma of a disrupted attachment.

• Our inner responsive caregiver.

Our Forgotten Foundation

As much as we might think about our lives, most of us don’t consider our first three years, when the foundation upon which our physical, cognitive, emotional, and social well-being was built. Though our conscious or thinking brain doesn’t recall this time, our bodies, autonomic nervous system, and stress hormone pathways do. 

In our first year of life, our brains doubled in size.  By three, our brain was 80% of what it is now; by our 5th birthday - 90%.  Our newborn, infant and toddler experiences are impacting us all the time.  I’ll spare you the research method, but know that if you blindfold kittens for three months after birth, they will be blind. Without visual sensory input, their visual pathways won’t form properly.  If you blindfold an adult cat, they don’t lose their vision.  Just like cats, our neurons in our early life required input to develop and connect.

Our environment as infants (namely our caregivers) could have been loving, warm and responsive…..or absent, detached, anxious, or hostile.  Our environment as toddlers could have been a secure base (again, our caregiver) that allowed us to explore and return for refueling, or our caregiver could have been absent, restrictive, or emotionally reactive.  Whatever our experiences, our neuronal connections were forming and becoming reinforced in such a way as to increase our survival in our world.  We weren’t all born into the same world.

Attachment is not about perfection.  Just as I wouldn’t suggest we can live a life free of toxins, inflammation, and damage to our microbiome, I won’t suggest we should have had the perfect attachment experience - whatever that even is.  

Purpose of Attachment

We are biologically wired to desire proximity to our caregiver(s) so that, as infants, we will be protected from harm, and as a species, we will survive.   British psychiatrist John Bowlby’s pioneering attachment theory says we organize our behavior and thinking to maintain these relationships. Because our survival is at stake, we will maintain these relationships even at great cost to our functioning.  Bowlby’s theory says that if our parents/caregivers are unable to meet our needs and the attachment is essentially disturbed, we will develop distortions of thinking and feeling, which is at the root of mental disorders.